Nov 18 2009
Managing Email Subscriber Expectations During The Holidays
The holidays are a time of goodwill, cheer, and full email inboxes. During this time of year, many email marketers struggle to find the correct balance between sending too many emails during the holidays (and therefore experiencing high unsubscribe and abuse complaints) and not sending enough emails (and seeing stagnant sales as a result). I recently saw a Zappos.com campaign that does a great job at helping to solve this issue – they notified their email subscribers about what they can expect to see in their inbox from Zappos.com this holiday season.
This fresh yet simple email explains when Zappos.com will begin their increased holiday email schedule. It also explains on which days the subscriber should expect to receive emails, and then reminds the subscriber to keep Zappos.com in mind for their gift purchasing needs.
Zappos.com, however, does not seem to allow their subscribers to opt-out or opt-down from the holiday specific campaigns. This is a feature I would look at implementing in the near future to mitigate unsubscribes and abuse compaints. Other than that, this is a great idea for many businesses as it keeps the customer informed and treats their relationship with respect.
Nice job!
The subject line of this email was, “Get Ready! A Sneak Peek Of The Zappos Holiday Season Is Inside!” Here is the creative:
[...] Lane blogged Wednesday about an interesting Zappos marketing eMail he got recently regarding their holiday [...]
Hi Jordan,
Interesting post. After reading it I decided to append to it and ponder what I call the “throttle back option”. Love to read your comments on the post here:
http://www.theemailguide.com/blog/2009/11/the-throttle-back-option/
Regards,
Jim Ducharme
Editor
TheeMailguide.com/blog
Hi Jim –
Thanks for your comments. Let’s see if subscriber notifications like this become more popular this holiday season and beyond.
Best regards,
Jordan
Excellent suggestion. Setting expectations ahead of the holiday also serves as a “first hint” as to what’s coming – always a good first step in any email campaign.
Thanks!
Best,
Rick
[...] an excellent post on managing subscriber expectations during the holidays today on the Email Responsibly [...]
Great email, but they suffer from the phenomenon of over-exclaiming. All but one of their paragraphs ends in an exclamation mark – leaving the subscriber bereft of endorphins by the end.